The Last of East of Eden

We had book club last night and it was a raging success. We had one of the longest discussions we've had in while. This book touched something within everyone--even those who did not quite finish it. This will be my last passage from East of Eden.

I believe that there is only one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught--in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too--in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well--or ill?

And in our time, when a man dies--if he has had wealth and influence and power and all the vestments that arouse envy, and after the living take stock of the dead man's property and his eminence and works and monuments--the question is still there: Was his life good or was it evil? . . . Envies are gone, and the measuring stick is: "Was he loved or was he hated? Is his death felt as a loss or does a kind of joy come of it?"

I think of whether I will be remembered lovingly, resentfully, or not at all. At some point it will not matter; we are all forgotten. How many of you know anything about your great-great-grandmother? Not I. But for those who know me now and will remember me, I am confident that I will be remembered lovingly. I don't say that arrogantly. I know it because I try to treat everyone with respect. I try to be empathetic. I try to give them laughter. I try. There are days when I am too tired and tell myself I don't care what other people feel or think. I justify my ugliness with the fact that I am diagnosed with major depression. Deep down, though, I know it is my choice, my timshel. I choose to do good more than I choose to do evil.